Algoritmien suorituskykyä tutkitaan simulaatioiden avulla. Heuristisen algoritmin suorituskyky on huomattavasti parempi kaikissa simuloiduissa tilanteissa. Algoritmien johdossa taustakohina oletettiin normaalijakautuneeksi, mutta simulaatioiden perusteella algoritmit toimivat kohtuullisen hyvin myös pidempihäntäisen taustakohinajakauman tapauksessa. Heuristinen algoritmi tarjoaa paremman suorituskyvyn lisäksi myös helpomman tavan asettaa kynnysarvoparametrit niin, että sensoreilla ja fuusiokeskuksella on haluttu väärän hälytyksen todennäköisyys.This thesis discusses the detection of a target using a network of acoustic sensors. The focus of the work is on considering what to do in a non-ideal situation, where many of the assumptions often made in decentralized detection literature are no longer valid. The sensors and a fusion center are grouped in an arbitrary formation, and the object is to detect an approaching target which emits a sound signal. Two different schemes are considered for processing the data at sensors and the fusion center. One of the schemes is based on maximum likelihood estimation and the other one is a heuristic approach based on classical detection theory.

The performances of the two schemes are studied in simulations. The heuristic scheme has a better detection performance for a given false alarm rate with all different sets of settings for the simulation. In derivation of the schemes, the background acoustic noise is assumed to be normal distributed, but, according to the simulations, the schemes still work relatively well under a long tailed noise distribution. In addition to better performance, the heuristic scheme offers easier setup of threshold values and approximation of false alarm rates for given thresholds using simple equations.